How’s your Bible reading going? If you’re like many Christians, you probably made plans to read through the Bible (or a portion of it) this year. If the statistics are correct, right about now many of you might need a little encouragement to stick with it. Or maybe the new year crept up on you, and you never even got around to picking a reading schedule for the year.

Either way—whether you’re just getting started or trying to stick with it—let me encourage you to consider doing your 2010 Bible reading in Logos Bible Software 4. I can’t promise that it will keep you on track all year, but there are five reasons I think it could be a big help.

With Logos Bible Software 4, you can

start and end your Bible reading schedule whenever you want

customize your reading schedule to fit your schedule and pace

recover from missed days and stick with it

read your Bible anywhere

turn Bible reading into Bible study with ease

Let’s take a look at each one of these.

1. Start and end your Bible reading schedule whenever you want.

With most traditional Bible reading plans, you start on January 1 and finish on December 31. So if you didn’t start your Bible reading on the first day of the year, chances are you probably aren’t going to try—it’s just too much work to get caught up.

But that doesn’t have to be the case if you do your Bible reading in Logos 4. Your Bible reading plan can start and end any day of the year. You can just as easily set up your plan to start today. With Logos 4 every day is a good day to start reading the Bible.

2. Customize your reading schedule to fit your schedule and pace.

There are lots of good Bible reading plans freely available on the internet. Some let you read straight through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Others have you read through the OT and the NT at the same time. Others throw in a Proverbs a day. Still others include a daily reading from the Psalms.

While there are a wide variety of plans available, there may not be a plan that’s a perfect fit for you. Scheduling your reading in Logos 4 means you can create just the right plan. You decide when to start and finish, how often to do your readings, what portions of the Bible to read, and how much to read at each sitting. There’s no need to be forced into a plan you can’t maintain with your schedule.

In Logos 4 there are several predefined plans, but creating your own unique plan is easy. Go to File > Reading Plan, or type “Create Reading Plan” into the Command Bar and hit enter. Click on “All Passages” and choose one of the default plans, or enter your own custom range. For example, if you want to read from multiple places in the Bible each day, separate the ranges with a pipe. Ge–Dt | Mt–Jn would give you a reading from the Pentateuch and the Gospels each day. You can even create your own chronological reading plan using a variety of custom ranges.

3. Recover from missed days and stick with it.

According to the statistics I’ve seen, the majority of people who set out to read through the Bible or a portion of the Bible in a year end up throwing in the towel pretty early on. If you miss a few days, it’s easy to feel so far behind that you can’t get caught up. You could just adjust your schedule, but a print schedule doesn’t really lend itself to changes.

That’s the beauty of Logos. If you fall behind and can’t get caught up, instead of quitting you can just select “Adjust plan from here,” and it will push everything back (update: this feature is in beta and will ship soon!). Or you can just skip the readings you’ve missed by selecting “Catch up to here”—not ideal, but definitely better than quitting. If you’d rather still end on the same day and not skip any of your readings, it’s easy to quickly edit and rebuild your plan.

4. Read your Bible anywhere.

For the sake of consistency, it’s ideal to do your Bible reading at the same time and in the same place every day. But that’s not always possible. What often happens is that if you miss your scheduled Bible reading time, you end up missing the day (and one missed day often leads to another). You may have other opportunities during the day to do your reading, but you don’t have a Bible handy or can’t remember where you left off.

Logos 4 makes it easier than ever to do your Bible reading anywhere. Your reading plans are synced between your computers, so whether you’re at home, at the office, or on the road, you can keep up with your reading. With the Logos iPhone app, you can even take your reading with you in your pocket. I’ve been doing most of my Bible reading this year on my iPod Touch, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the ability to make the most of my bus trips to and from work* and the convenience of reading in bed.

5. Turn Bible reading into Bible study with ease.

If you’re reading the Bible carefully, you’re likely going to have questions about the meaning of a word or a verse or the location of a parallel passage or cross reference. Many print Bible’s have basic cross references and notes, but even with a good study Bible you’re going to come up empty handed on occasion. Digging deeper with print resources can take a lot of time and effort, and doing your reading in a print Bible means you’ll probably be more likely to pass up on the opportunities to turn reading into fruitful study and meditation. The beauty of Logos is that you can get answers in just a few minutes to just about any question that arises while you read. If you want to take your Bible reading to the next level this year, Logos 4 might just be exactly what you need.

Whether you’re just now considering a reading plan for 2010 or you’re on the brink of giving up on one, I’d encourage you to get started today with Logos Bible Software 4.

* In order to do my Bible reading on the bus, where I don’t have Wi-Fi access, I have to make sure to look up my reading before I’m out of Wi-Fi range at home or at work. But this will no longer be an issue. We’re currently beta testing offline support for reading plans, and it works great. It’s coming to an app store near you soon!

As you study the Bible with Logos Bible Software 4, you’ll find yourself with numerous resources, tools, and guides open on the screen. Now it’s time to close the panels and move in a different direction. You can of course close each panel individually, but that may take a while. So here’s a quick way to close everything on the screen and return to the Home Page.

One of the things I love about Logos 4 is its ability to take something conceptual and make it visual. Logos 4 does this with the help of topographical and interactive maps, high-resolution infographics, Visual Filters, various types of Passage Analysis, as well as many other diagrams, charts, and graphs.

One feature that I find myself returning to often is Biblical People. Biblical People makes understanding complex lineages as well as other interpersonal relationships in the Bible easier by providing diagrams of family trees and links to Scripture references pertaining to that individual throughout the Bible. All of those genealogies, that I might gloss over, suddenly begin to make sense. For a visual learner such as myself, there is no way to communicate the world that is unlocked by features such as this.

One of the great things about a feature like Biblical People is its accessibility from anywhere I am in Logos 4.

Let’s say I am reading in Exodus and I am interested in seeing Moses’s genealogy. All I need to do is right-click on his name, select Person from the window that opens (screenshot) and then choose Biblical People from the top left of the next window. It’s that easy, and it opens up in a separate window so I can have it available while I continue in the text.

Another easy way to access Biblical People is through the Passage Guide. When I put Moses’s birth and adoption story (Exodus 2:1-10) into the Passage Guide, it searches My Library and opens up all relevant Commentaries, Cross References, Parallel Passages, and a host of other important tools including Biblical People. In the preview pane for Biblical People (screenshot) you get a preview of artwork and archaeology that follows the verse theme as well as various trees and visuals that fit with that theme, too, including Slavery in Egypt, Joseph Sold as a Slave, and family trees for Moses, Miriam, Levi, and Kohath.

From the home page you can go right to Biblical People by choosing Tools and clicking on Biblical People under the Bible Facts header (screenshot).

Once I am in the Biblical People window there is so much useful information laid out in an uncluttered fashion. Across the top I have a quick explanation of who Moses is, a list of his relatives (clicking on any of their names opens up a new Biblical People for that character), dictionary entries from the dictionaries in My Library, and a collection of Biblical Things associated with Moses (Tent of Meeting, Burning Bush, Golden Calf, Bronze Serpent, etc.).

The center of the pane has Moses’s Family Tree. I can customize the look of the graphic with seven variants, and the scroll wheel on my mouse can adjust the size of the Family Tree. By clicking the Biblical People icon on the upper left, I can copy, print, or even send the graphic to a PowerPoint presentation.

Across the bottom runs a ribbon of associated Family Trees like Aaron, Ithamar, and Eleazar. There are also visual representations of the individuals involved in significant events in the life of Moses (screenshot). You will even find a graphic listing the Psalm Authors, which includes Moses of course. At the bottom of the Biblical People window for Moses there are 26 more associated Biblical People graphics along with 20 related works of art. It is no small feat that all of this information is laid out in such a clean and unobtrusive fashion.

This is just a peek into my new favorite feature, one that really makes Logos 4 pop. Seeing a visual representation of the various relationships in the Scriptures really cements the significance of so many people, events, and families. What makes Logos 4 so ingenious is not just the amazing amount of information but the intuitive, imaginative and graceful way that information is presented.

Biblical People is a feature that is not available in the Christian Home Library package. This is a great reason to consider upgrading if you currently have the Christian Home Library (not to mention the 144 resources you’ll get by jumping up one rung to the Bible Study Library). Take a look at the custom upgrader to see the special pricing designed to take you to the next level of Bible study.

All throughout Logos Bible Software 4 you’ll see a reference or passage box in which you can type a Bible reference to initiate a search or generate a report. Please remember you do not have to type out a full reference. Logos accepts most any abbreviation that is close to what you want. For example, observe the following time-saving shortcuts and find the style that works best for you:

Perhaps you have a word or phrase you want to leap off the page as you read the Bible. With a Visual Filter, Logos 4 will automatically highlight that for you in any or all of your Bibles. Here’s how it works:

Choose File | Visual Filter

Assign a name to this Unnamed Visual Filter

Select All Passages from the range drop down list

Select the desired Bible(s) from the drop down list

Type a word or phrase to highlight in the Find box

Simply type words like grace or forgive

Place a phrase in double quotes like “son of God”

Select a Formatting style form the drop down list

You can add other words or phrases in the additional Find box(es)

Close the Visual Filter

Now when you open the Bible, these designated words and phrases will be highlighted as you indicated. With this feature, you can call attention to the topics or themes of your choice.

There are scores of other ways to personalize your study with Logos Bible Software 4. At Camp Logos I’ll walk you through many of those customizable features of the software.

Grand Opening Seminars

We’re kicking off the New Year with two more Logos 4 Grand Opening Seminars in northern California, January 6–7 and 8–9. We have special prizes to give away (including a leather bound ESV Study Bible) and Dale Pritchett, Vice President of Logos, will be present for Q and A sessions. Please check out mpseminars.com for more information and the Camp Logos calendar for a complete schedule of seminars. I look forward to seeing you soon at Camp Logos.

Today’s guest post is written by Kyle Anderson. Kyle has been an integral part of the ETD (Electronic Text Development) team for the last year.

“Late in time behold Him come/Offspring of a Virgin’s womb”

Between singing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” listening to sermons, and doing advent readings with my daughter, I can’t help but think about the significance of the virgin birth.

I thought I’d take the opportunity to show how to use Logos 4 to study the virgin birth. Typing Matthew 1 or Luke 1 into the box on the Home Page and clicking “Go” is a great place to start. Doing a Bible Word Study on parthenos (παρθένος) is also a useful exercise. You can launch a Bible Word Study from the Guides menu by typing g:parthenos or by right-clicking on virgin in a verse like Matthew 1:23, selecting “Lemma παρθένος,” and choosing “Bible Word Study.”

Another direction you might take is a systematic or theological one. I started by doing a search of my entire library for “Virgin Birth.” I instantly received over 7,500 hits. Awesome, but I wanted to make my search a bit more focused.

In order to narrow it down, I made a collection of my Bible dictionaries and encyclopedias. Searching only those books yielded a more manageable 565 results. I started by looking at the article “Virgin Birth of Jesus” in the Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible. Of its theological importance I learned, “From the very beginning the doctrine of the virgin birth became the foundation of a high Christology. Many have pointed out that the earliest church fathers stressed this more perhaps than any other event as proof of the incarnation and deity of Christ” (2126). And in New Bible DictionaryI read about Biblical evidence for the virgin birth outside of Matthew and Luke. It turns out those books aren’t the only place to go for allusions to the virgin birth. Paul makes a possible reference in Galatians 4:4.

The next thing you might do is ask, “What have Christian writers throughout the centuries had to say about the virgin birth?” I quickly made a collection of all my systematic theology books and discovered over 1,000 potential targets!

The first thing I checked was G. C. Berkouwer’s chapter in The Work of Christ entitled “The Great Mystery.” In it he dealt with the virgin birth at length and connected it with a doctrine of original sin: “In confessing the virgin birth we do not attempt to exclude Christ from the original sin which supposedly would be derived from a human father, but rather from the original guilt of all who are born of Adam” (129). Clearly that’s food for thought!

In Church Dogmatics I/2, Karl Barth called the virgin birth the “Miracle of Christmas” and described the coming of the Son of God in flesh through the Virgin Mary as a “new thing” outside our normal experience as humans. And because Jesus Christ came for us and our salvation, the exclusion of an earthly biological parent excludes the possibility of us humans contributing to our salvation in any way. The virgin birth is a sign of God’s total grace towards us.

However you celebrate your Christmas, Logos 4 is an excellent tool for understanding the significance of this important season.

As you know, when you travel to a new place you want to ask the locals where to eat and what to see. People who live in an area know more than what’s in a travel brochure. That’s my philosophy when it comes to Camp Logos, our two day training seminar for Logos Bible Software. I want to give you practical suggestions and applications that you may not read in a help file or discover on your own. For example, try this:

Open a Bible from the Library. Now open a commentary which should display in a separate tile. Click the panel menu (cover image; top-left) of each tile and select Link set A for both resources. Now when you jump to a different verse in one, they’ll both move there.

Return to the Library and drag some of your favorite commentaries into the same tile as the previous commentary. Make sure to set these to the same Link set A.

You now have a Bible in one tile and several commentaries in the other. Jump to a different verse in the Bible and all the commentaries will follow. Click in the commentary tile to read your first. Now press Ctrl + Page Down to move to the next commentary. That keystroke will take you through just the tabs in one tile!

For the icing on the cake, choose the Layouts menu and name the Now Snapshot. When you want to return to this setup choose the Layouts menu again and select this Named Layout. You now have instant commentary insights from your favorite resources!

Now for the cherry on top, drag the named layout from the Layouts menu to the Shortcuts bar. Click the icon and your commentary layout opens!

If this has been helpful, I think you’ll thoroughly enjoy Camp Logos. We move through many of the features of your software in a thorough yet very practical manner.

Grand Opening Seminars

We’re kicking off the New Year with two more Logos 4 Grand Opening Seminars in northern California, January 6–7 and 8–9. We have special prizes to give away (including a leather bound ESV Study Bible) and Dale Pritchett, Vice President of Logos, will be present for Q and A sessions. Please check out mpseminars.com for more information and the Camp Logos calendar for a complete schedule of seminars. I look forward to seeing you soon at Camp Logos.

Reliance on Greek and Hebrew for sermon content is in decline. At Logos, we are aware of the research which suggests less than 20% of pastors who have had biblical language training actually use that training on a regular basis. We’ve also taken note that many schools around the country no longer require Greek and Hebrew for seminary or pre-seminary training.

We hope to do something about that. Introducing a brand new series of lessons on using the biblical languages tools in Logos: Learn to Use Biblical Greek and Hebrew with Logos Bible Software. This is a complete set of video lessons in HD, which covers all the basics of interpreting the Bible using the Greek and Hebrew tools in Logos Bible Software. No prior knowledge of Greek or Hebrew is required, and even English grammar is explained. Even better, there’s no rote memorization of vocabulary lists, grammatical forms, or paradigms.

Dr. Heiser, one of the instructors, has done translation work in roughly a dozen languages—among them Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Ugaritic cuneiform, Akkadian, and Sumerian. He recently sat down to talk about non-traditional methods of language learning in general, and this project in particular. Check out the complete video:

If you’re a pastor, these lessons are a great way to refresh the Greek and Hebrew skills you learned in seminary or Bible college. If your ability to study the Bible in the original languages has slipped in the years or decades since seminary, these instructional videos will get you back on track.

If you’re a lay leader who’s thought about seminary, but it’s never worked out, then this is your chance to learn how to use the Greek and Hebrew tools in Logos for your Bible study. With these videos, you can learn at your own pace, and avoid the stress of a college- or graduate-level classroom environment. Pause lessons, review previous material, and move on to the next lesson at your convenience.

For professors, Learn to Use Biblical Greek and Hebrew with Logos Bible Software is perfect for teaching preparation in your courses that focus on Greek and Hebrew tools for English readers. Use the videos to prepare your lessons. Learn new teaching methods, and glean ideas for your own teaching and research on the original languages. Professors teaching traditional first-year Greek and Hebrew courses can use the videos for showing students how to use their language training for exegesis. These lessons are also a great way to integrate technology into the classroom. Supplement your teaching and lectures with HD video. Help your students use Logos Bible Software for studying the Bible with the original languages.

We’ve already begun initial work on the project. The final videos will be in HD, but you can see some very rough previews right now posted on the product page. While you’re there, be sure to place you pre-order to show your support for the project! You can also interact with the instructors and ask questions about the project in the Forums.

As I was growing up in Nashville, TN, my father was truck driver. He knew every back road in our area. As a result, when I learned to drive he was constantly asking me, “Do you want to know a shortcut to the store? How about a shortcut to the park?”

If you’ve ever attended one of our Logos training seminars called Camp Logos you know I’m all about shortcuts. At least I come by it naturally.

So do you want to know a shortcut to the Home Page? How about to the Library? What about to start a Search?

You and I have a lot of books. Then we have our favorite books. For example, within Logos Bible Software 4 we have a boatload of Bibles. Yet we also have our favorite Bibles. We have considerable commentaries. Within those, we have our favorite commentaries. These favorite resources in Logos are called Prioritized Resources. These favorites are then opened first in various places throughout the software. The good news is you get to designate your priorities. Here’s how:

Open the Library

Click Prioritize on the right to open a pane called Prefer these resources:

Now drag and drop your favorites from the Library to the list on the right

I suggest placing your Bibles at the top, then Bible dictionaries, then commentaries, and so on. This way your list is neatly organized so you can easily change it if you wish. Remember, within the list you can drag and drop resources to a new position.

The next time you launch a Bible study from the Home Page, notice what commentaries appear first in the Passage Guide. Notice which five of your top Bibles open first in the upper center tile.